Last Witnesses

by Svetlana Alexievich

  * Samuil Marshak (1887–1964) was a poet, writer, and translator most famous for his books for children. However, the poem “Chicken” was in fact written by his friend and fellow children’s poet Kornei Chukovsky (1882–1969).

  “…NEITHER SUITORS NOR SOLDIERS…”

  Vera Novikova

  THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. NOW A TRAMWAY DISPATCHER.

  It was so long ago…But it’s still frightening…

  I remember such a sunny day, the wind ruffles the spiderwebs. Our village is burning, our house is burning. We come out of the forest. The little children cry, “A bonfire! A bonfire! Beautiful!” And all the others weep. Mama weeps and crosses herself.

  The house burned down…We rummaged in the ashes, but didn’t find anything. Only charred forks. The stove stayed as it had stood. There was food in it—potato pancakes. Mama took the frying pan out with her hands: “Eat, children.” It was impossible to eat those pancakes, they smelled so much of smoke, but we ate them, because we had nothing else but grass. All we had left was the grass and the ground.

  It was so long ago…But it’s still frightening…

  My cousin was hanged…Her husband was the commander of a partisan unit, and she was pregnant. Someone denounced her to the Germans, and they came. They chased everybody out to the square. Ordered that no one should cry. Next to the village council grew a tall tree. They drove the horse up to it. My cousin stood on the sledge…She had a long braid…They put the noose around her neck, she took the braid out of it. The horse pulled the sledge away, and she hung there spinning…The women shouted…They shouted without tears, just with voices. We weren’t allowed to cry. We could shout, but not cry—not be sorry. They came up and killed those who cried. There were adolescent boys, sixteen or seventeen years old. They were shot. They had cried.

  So young…As yet neither suitors nor soldiers…

  Why have I told you this? It’s more frightening for me now than then. That’s why I don’t recall it…

  “IF ONLY ONE SON COULD BE LEFT…”

  Sasha Kavrus

  TEN YEARS OLD. NOW DOCTOR OF PHILOLOGY.

  I was at school…

  We went outside and began to play as usual. Just then fascist planes came flying and dropped bombs on our village. We had already heard stories about the battles in Spain, about the fate of Spanish children. Now the bombs were dropping on us. Old women fell to the ground and prayed…So…I’ve remembered all my life the voice of Levitan* announcing the beginning of the war. Stalin’s speech I don’t remember. People stood for whole days by the kolkhoz loudspeaker waiting for something, and I stood next to my father.

  The first to burst into our village of Brusy, in the Myadelsky district, was a punitive squad. They opened fire, shot all the cats and dogs, and then began interrogations, trying to find out where the activists lived. Before the war the village council was in our cottage, but no one pointed to my father. So…they didn’t betray him…During the night I had a dream. I had been shot, I lie there and think, but for some reason I don’t die…

  I remember an episode of the Germans chasing chickens. They’d catch one, hold it up, and whirl it around until only the head was left in their hand. They laughed. But it seemed to me that our chickens cried out…like people…in human voices…So did the cats and the dogs when they were being shot…I had never seen any sort of death before. Neither human nor any other sort. Once I saw dead nestlings in the forest, that was all. I hadn’t seen any more death…

  Our village was set on fire in 1943…That day we were digging potatoes. Our neighbor Vassily—he had been in WWI and knew a little German—said, “I’ll go and ask the Germans not to burn the village. There are children here.” He went and got burned up himself. They burned the school. All the books. They burned our vegetable patches. Our gardens.

  Where were we to go? Father took us to the partisans in the Kozinsky forests. On the way we met people from another village, which had also been burned. They said the Germans were very close by. We got into some sort of a hole: me, my brother Volodya, mama with our little sister, and father. Father took a grenade, and we decided that if the Germans noticed us, he’d pull the pin. We already said goodbye to each other. My brother and I made nooses to hang ourselves and put them around our necks. Mama kissed us all. I heard her say to father, “If only one son could be left…” Then father said, “Let them run for it. They’re young, maybe they’ll save themselves.” But I felt so sorry for mama that I didn’t go. So…I didn’t go…

  We heard dogs barking, we heard foreign words of command, we heard shooting. Our forest was all windfall, fir trees uprooted, you couldn’t see anything ten paces away. It was all close, then we heard the voices from farther and farther off. When it became quiet, mama couldn’t get up, her legs were paralyzed. Papa carried her on his back.

  Several days later we met some partisans who knew father. By then we could barely walk, we were so hungry. Our feet hurt. We were walking and one partisan asked me, “What would you like to find under a pine tree: candy? cookies? a piece of bread?” “A handful of bullets,” I replied. The partisans remembered it long after. I hated the Germans so much for everything…And for mama…

  We walked past a burned-down village…The rye hadn’t been harvested, there were potatoes growing. Apples lying on the ground. Pears…But no people. Cats and dogs running around. Solitary. So…No people. Not a single human being. Hungry cats…

  I remember after the war we had one primer in the village, and the first book I found and read was a collection of arithmetic problems.

  I read it like poetry. Yes, so…

  * Yuri Levitan (1914–1983), the principal Soviet radio announcer during WWII and after, was known as “the voice of the war.”

  “HE WIPED HIS TEARS WITH HIS SLEEVE…”

  Oleg Boldyrev

  EIGHT YEARS OLD. NOW AN ARTISAN.

  A good question…What’s better—to remember or to forget? Maybe it’s better to keep quiet? For many years I tried to forget…

  We spent a month getting to Tashkent. A month! It was way in the rear. My father was sent there as an expert. Factories and mills were being relocated there. The whole country was moving to the rear. Deep inside. A good thing our country is big.

  There I learned that my older brother had been killed at Stalingrad. He had been eager to get to the front, but I hadn’t even been taken to work at the factory yet, because I was young. “You’ve still got half a year before you turn ten.” My mother shook her head. “Forget these childish thoughts.” Father also frowned: “A factory isn’t a kindergarten, you have to work twelve hours a day. And what work!”

  The factory made mines, shells, bombs. Adolescents were accepted to do polishing…The unfinished molded metal parts were polished by hand…The method was simple—a stream of sand heated to 300 degrees Fahrenheit was directed through a hose under high pressure. The sand bounced off the metal, burned your lungs, hit your face, your eyes. It was rare that anyone could stand it longer than a week. It called for strong character.

  But in 1943…I turned ten and father took me with him anyhow. To his workshop number three. To the section where fuses for bombs were welded.

  Three of us worked together: me, Oleg, and Vaniushka, who were only two years older than me. We assembled the fuse, and Yakov Mironovich Sapozhnikov (his last name is stamped in my memory), an expert at his work, welded it. After that you had to get on a box in order to reach the vise, clamp the sleeve of the fuse, and calibrate the inner thread with a tap. We quickly got the knack of it…The rest was simpler still: you insert a plug and put it in a box. Once the box was full, we brought it to where it would be loaded. It was a bit heavy, up to a hundred pounds, but two of us could manage it. We didn’t distract Yakov Mironovich: his was the finest work. The most responsible—the welding!

  The most unpleasant thing was th
e fire of the electric welding. You tried not to look at the blue sparks, yet in twelve hours you got enough of those flashes. Your eyes feel as if they’re filled with sand. You rub them, but it doesn’t help. Whether from that or from the monotonous humming of the electric generator that supplied the current for the welding, or simply from fatigue, we sometimes wanted terribly to sleep. Especially during the night. To sleep! To sleep!

  Whenever Yakov Mironovich saw the least possibility for us to have a break, he ordered, “Off you go to the electrode room!”

  He didn’t need to tell us twice: there was no cozier or warmer corner in the whole factory than where the electrodes were dried by hot air. We climbed onto a warm wooden shelf and instantly fell asleep. A quarter of an hour later Yakov Mironovich would come to wake us up.

  Once I woke up before he began to rouse us. I saw Yakov Mironovich looking at us. Drawing out the minutes. And wiping his tears with his sleeve.

  “HE HUNG ON THE STRING LIKE A BABY…”

  Liuba Alexandrovich

  ELEVEN YEARS OLD. NOW A WORKER.

  I don’t want to…I don’t even want to repeat this word war…

  The war reached us quickly. On July 9, after a few weeks, I remember, a battle was already going on for our regional center of Senno. There were many refugees, so many that there weren’t enough houses to put them all in. For instance, we had six families with children in our house. It was the same in all of them.

  First came people and then an evacuation of livestock began. I remember it very well, because it was frightening. Frightening pictures. The nearest station to us was Bogdan, it still exists, between Orsha and Lepiel. Livestock were evacuated in that direction not only from our village but from the entire Vitebsk region. It was a hot summer, the livestock were driven in big herds: cows, sheep, pigs, calves. Horses were driven separately. The people who drove them were so tired they no longer cared…The cows weren’t milked. They would go into a yard and stand there by the porch until somebody milked them. They were milked onto the road, onto the ground…The pigs suffered especially badly. They’re unable to stand heat and long walking. They walked and fell down. The heat made their bodies swell, and it was so scary that in the evening I was afraid to go outside. Dead horses…sheep…cows…lay everywhere. There was no time to bury them, and they swelled more each day…They swelled and puffed up…

  Peasants know what it takes to raise one cow, how much work. How much time. They wept watching the livestock perish. It wasn’t like a tree that falls down silently; there was noise, whinnying, bleating. Moaning.

  I remember my grandfather’s words: “And these innocent ones, why must they perish? They can’t even say anything.” My grandfather was a bookish man, he always read in the evenings.

  Before the war my older sister worked in the regional party committee, and she stayed behind for the underground work. She brought home many books from the committee library, portraits, red banners. We buried them in the garden under the apple trees. Also her party card. We did it during the night, and I had the feeling that the red…the red color…would be seen from under the ground.

  For some reason I don’t remember how the Germans came…I remember that they had been there, had been there for a long time, and then they drove us all together, the whole village. They put machine guns in front of us: Where are the partisans? Who do they come to? Everybody was silent. Then they counted off every third person and brought them out to be shot. They shot six people: two men, two women, and two adolescents. And drove away.

  Overnight fresh snow fell…It was the New Year…The dead people lay under this fresh snow. There was no one to bury them, no one to make the coffins. The men were hiding in the forest. Old women burned wood to heat up the ground at least a little and dig the graves. They spent a long time beating their shovels against the frozen ground…

  Soon the Germans came back…Several days later…They gathered all the children, there were thirteen of us, and put us at the head of their column—they were afraid of partisan mines. We walked ahead of them, and they drove behind. If, for instance, they had to stop and take water from a well, they sent us first. We walked for ten miles like that. The boys weren’t much afraid, but the girls walked and cried. They followed us in trucks…Impossible to run away…I remember we walked barefoot, and it was just the beginning of spring. The first days…

  I want to forget…I want to forget this…

  The Germans went from cottage to cottage…They gathered those whose children had joined the partisans…They cut their heads off in the middle of the village…We were ordered to watch. In one cottage they didn’t find anybody, so they caught the cat and hanged him. He hung on the string like a baby…

  I want to forget it all…

  “YOU’LL BE MY CHILDREN NOW…”

  Nina Shunto

  SIX YEARS OLD. NOW A COOK.

  Aie-aie-aie! My heart begins to ache at once…

  Before the war we lived only with papa…Mama was dead. When papa went to the front, we were left with our aunt. Our aunt lived in the village of Zadory, in the Lepiel district. Soon after papa brought us to her, she ran into a branch with her eye and lost the eye. An infection set in and she died. Our only aunt. I was left alone with my brother, who was little. He and I went to look for the partisans, because for some reason we decided that our papa was there. We spent nights wherever we happened to be. I remember hiding in a haystack during a thunderstorm. We pulled some hay away, made a hole and hid in it. There were many children like us. They all looked for their parents. Even if they knew their parents were dead, they still told us that they were also looking for papa and mama. Or some other relations.

  We walked…walked…In some village…a window was open. Probably potato pies had been baked there a little earlier. When we came closer, my brother smelled these pies and fainted. I went into the cottage, I wanted to ask for a piece for my brother, because otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten up. And I couldn’t carry him, I wasn’t strong enough. I didn’t find anyone in the cottage, but I couldn’t help myself and broke off a piece of the pie. We sat and waited for the owners, so that they wouldn’t think we were thieves. The owner came, she lived alone. She didn’t let us go, she said: “You’ll be my children now…” As soon as she said it, my brother and I fell asleep right there at the table. We felt so good. We had a home now.

  Soon this village was burned down. All the people in it, too. And our new auntie. We stayed alive because early in the morning we went to pick berries…We sat on a hillock and looked at the fire…We already understood…We didn’t know where to go. How would we find another auntie? We had just come to love this one. We even said to each other that we would call our new auntie “mama.” She was so nice, she always kissed us before we went to sleep.

  We were picked up by the partisans. From the partisan unit we were sent away from the front on a plane…

  What do I have left from the war? I don’t understand what strangers are, because my brother and I grew up among strangers. Strangers saved us. But what kind of strangers are they? All people are one’s own. I live with that feeling, though I’m often disappointed. Peacetime life is different…

  “WE KISSED THEIR HANDS…”

  David Goldberg

  FOURTEEN YEARS OLD. NOW A MUSICIAN.

  We were preparing for a celebration…

  That day we were supposed to solemnly open our Pioneer camp “Talka.” We invited some border patrol soldiers, and in the morning went to the forest to get some flowers. We published a festive issue of the camp newspaper, decorated the entrance arch. The place was wonderful, the weather fine. We were on vacation! We were so happy that even the noise of the airplanes we heard all morning didn’t alarm us.

  Suddenly we were asked to line up, and they informed us that in the morning, while we were asleep, Hitler had attacked our country. In my mind war was con
nected with the events of Khalkhyn Gol,* it was something distant and brief. There was no doubt about our army being invincible and indestructible, our tanks and airplanes were the best. All this we had heard at school. And at home. The boys were confident, but many girls cried a lot and were frightened. The older children were charged with going around the units and calming everybody, especially the little ones. In the evening the boys who were already fourteen or fifteen years old were handed small caliber rifles. Great! In fact, we became very proud. Held our heads high. There were four rifles in the camp. We took turns standing guard three at a time and protecting the camp. I even liked it. I went to the forest with this rifle to see if I was afraid or not. I didn’t want to turn out to be a coward.

  For several days we waited for them to come for us. No one came, and we ourselves went to the Pukhovichi station. We stayed there for a long time. The stationmaster said there wouldn’t be any trains from Minsk, that there was no connection. Suddenly one of the children came running and shouted that there was a very heavy train pulling in. We got onto the tracks…First we waved our hands, then we took off our red neckerchiefs. We waved our red neckerchiefs to stop the train. The engineer saw us and started showing desperately with his hands that he couldn’t stop the train—that he wouldn’t be able to start it afterward. “Throw the children onto the flatcars if you can!” he shouted. Some people sitting on the flatcars also shouted to us, “Save the children! Save the children!”

  The train slowed down a little. Wounded men reached down from the flatcars to pick up the little children. All the children were put onto this train. It was the last train from Minsk…